jlg@beta.lanl.gov (Jim Giles) (08/17/88)
In article <72@cubsun.BIO.COLUMBIA.EDU>, shenkin@cubsun.BIO.COLUMBIA.EDU (Peter Shenkin) writes: > Doug McDonald (mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu) writes: > > One severe problem with the Fortran 8x proplsal is that it implies > >that Fortran 9x will cause something like 90% of all present programs > >to stop working. That's right, a very large majority might die. > > Well, I'm not an 8x fan, but in fairness, the same criticism could be > leveled at fortran 77, which also listed a number of deprecated features > which "should/could" disappear in the 8x version. [... This is not true. The Fortran 77 standard contains no deprecated features and no discussion on future directions that the language may take. The Fortran 77 document is a description of the language as it is - and nothing more. > ...] I don't have the > standard here, but one of the features which was supposed to disappear was > signifying a comment by a C in the first column. The "right" way to do > this under the 77 standard is to use an asterisk in the first column. This is the _entire_ description of comment lines in the Fortran 77 document: 2.3 Statements, Comments, and Lines. [...] There is also a line called a _comment_line_ (3.2.1), which is not part of any statement and is intended to provide documentation. [...] 3.2.1 Comment Line. A _comment_line_ is any line that contains a C or an asterisk in column 1, or contains only blank characters in columns 1 through 72. A comment line that contains a C or an asterisk in column 1 may contain any character capable of representation in the processor in columns 2 through 72. A comment line does not affect the executable program in any way and may be used to provide documentation. Comment lines may appear anywhere in the program unit. Comment lines may precede the initial line of the first statement of any program unit. Comment lines may appear between an initial line and its first continuation line or between two consecutive continuation lines. [...] Appendix B3 [...] When a continuation line follows a comment line, the continuation line is part of the current statement; it is not a continuation of the comment line. A comment line is not part of a statement. The standard does not restrict the number of consecutive comment lines. The limit of 19 continuation lines permitted for a statement should not be construed as being a limitation on the number of consecutive comment lines. I can see why nobody took the deprecation of 'C' in comment lines very seriously - it wasn't ever mentioned! J. Giles Los Alamos